Salt Marsh and Blue Carbon Dynamics in Hangzhou Bay from Landsat Imagery, 1986–2023

Hangzhou Bay, China, is the focus of this dataset, which uses a long-term remote sensing framework to quantify salt marsh dynamics and carbon burial. The data covers 1986 to 2023, tracking transitions in wetland area, native and invasive species, and carbon sequestration. It was authored by Wenting Cao and published on figshare in 2026.

Use Cases

• Modeling long-term carbon burial changes based on species-level vegetation maps.
• Analyzing the impact of coastal reclamation on wetland area loss.
• Tracking the expansion of invasive Spartina alterniflora against native Scirpus mariqueter.
• Assessing the successional pathways of salt marshes using continuous change detection.

Strengths

• Covers a 37-year time series from 1986 to 2023.
• Quantifies specific changes: 60% decline in total wetland area, 73% decrease in bare mudflats, and 174% expansion of invasive Spartina alterniflora.
• Provides a quantified carbon impact: a 49% reduction in annual blue carbon burial from 71.1 to 36.4 Gg C yr⁻¹.

Limitations

• Column-level documentation is absent; field semantics must be inferred after download.
• Row count is unknown, which may limit suitability assessment.
• The primary data file is a DOCX document (459.2 KB), suggesting the underlying geospatial data may not be directly included.

Provenance

Source

figshare, authored by Wenting Cao.

Collection Method

Integrated remote sensing framework using the Landsat archive, optimal phenological window selection, continuous change detection, and Random Forest classification.

Time Range

1986 to 2023

Freshness

Last updated 2026-06-02 18:40:04; freshness should be verified.

Geography

Hangzhou Bay, China